Comparative Risk Methods. P. A. Murphy, US EPA, National Center for Environmental Assessment, 26 W. Martin Luther King Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45268
The disinfection and treatment of public drinking water supplies to prevent transmission of microbial pathogens is one of the most successful public health interventions of this century. In 1974 it was discovered that chemical byproducts were formed when chlorine was added to waters containing organic precursor material. Epidemiologic and toxicologic studies suggest that some or all of the identified byproducts may be associated with adverse outcomes, qualitatively different than those that the technology was intended to prevent. A complete risk analysis of the situation requires that all the consequences—intended as well as unintended—of this public health intervention be evaluated in an integrated way. This presentation will 1) describe the concept of risk-risk tradeoffs; 2) describe methods and common metrics for making meaningful comparisons of disparate health outcomes and their public health impacts, and 3) introduce an integrated, analytical approach (the Comparative Risk Framework Methodology), recently developed by U.S. EPA-NCEA, for identifying, measuring, valuing, and comparing the different health risks and benefits across alternative drinking water treatment scenarios.
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